Obituary of a house: Help us look beyond Grand Rapids vacancy numbers

Courtesy Photo | Grand Rapids Public LibraryCan you identify this vacant house from an old Realtor card on file at the Grand Rapids Public Library? Respond in the comments below. Or share your story of housing vacancy in the form below.

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Have you seen this house?

If not this one, you’ve seen others like it in Grand Rapids — many more of them in recent years, in fact.

That’s because in September this four-bedroom bungalow, home to a succession of families since the 1920s, joined the unfortunately growing ranks of vacant housing.

More than 22 percent of the houses in the neighborhood were recorded as vacant in the 2010 Census, according to the Johnson Center.

The neighborhood with the lowest vacancy rate is less than a mile away and directly to the east: Ottawa Hills, which borders Giddings Avenue SE on the west and East Grand Rapids on the east. The vacancy rate on those curving, tree-lined Ottawa Hills streets, according to the Johnson Center, was less than 2.5 percent.

But other statistics are lurking in the census numbers that might go overlooked — numbers, for example, that show Grand Rapids does not lead the county for vacant housings — that distinction belongs to several rural townships. (More on that later.)

The census does not record how many of those vacancies were the result of the foreclosure crisis of the past four years. Nor does the census record why people moved away, or what effect that had on the neighborhood. It does not record the children’s toys left behind, the height markers scratched onto doorjambs, the family photos that capture when the house was alive as a home.

The house in this photo is not in the highest-vacancy neighborhood in Grand Rapids. But it does sit empty, like thousands of others, and it does have a story to tell.

Over the next few days, The Press and mlive.com will tell part of that story.